I agree that setting a small player patch-testing unit would be very worthwhile, if only to release some of the dev's time in testing it as much themselves. Ideally a system could be set up for two installs of the game, for these testers, one with the proposed patch installed, and a normal one. On being provided with a private-link to an experimental patch, they can patch the relevant install, play and report issues privately. The other install would be for regular play.

I agree that setting a small player patch-testing unit would be very worthwhile, if only to release some of the dev's time in testing it as much themselves. Ideally a system could be set up for two installs of the game, for these testers, one with the proposed patch installed, and a normal one. On being provided with a private-link to an experimental patch, they can patch the relevant install, play and report issues privately. The other install would be for regular play.

They most likely do. The official Discord has a tester role and you can give only certain users access to Steam betas in the properties of the game which is a much simpler solution than you propose as a private-link.

Thing is, they most likely don't do nearly enough of it. With small teams in my experience, testers are probably a very small circle of friends who aren't necessarily the most competent with the game mechanics nor with testing as a whole, and certainly aren't numerous enough to stress-test.

There needs to be a broader beta testing program, otherwise the playerbase as a whole becomes beta testers. This of course does little to build a reputation for quality. While every single update since launch has improved the game in some ways, every single one of them also introduced new and entirely avoidable bugs (some of them quite bad). This is not even to mention that some of the long standing, well known bugs, remain consistently unfixed - something a competent group of core testers would perhaps facilitate. Just yesterday, I once again broke the convoy AI on the first try using very well known steps that I had reported months ago...

Thing is, they most likely don't do nearly enough of it. With small teams in my experience, testers are probably a very small circle of friends who aren't necessarily the most competent with the game mechanics nor with testing as a whole, and certainly aren't numerous enough to stress-test.

There needs to be a broader beta testing program, otherwise the playerbase as a whole becomes beta testers. This of course does little to build a reputation for quality. While every single update since launch has improved the game in some ways, every single one of them also introduced new and entirely avoidable bugs (some of them quite bad). This is not even to mention that some of the long standing, well known bugs, remain consistently unfixed - something a competent group of core testers would perhaps facilitate. Just yesterday, I once again broke the convoy AI on the first try using very well known steps that I had reported months ago...

I 100% agree with this but you have to realize the game is still in VERY early stages of early access, we are all really considered beta testers at this point but a lot of the bugs I've seen are easily avoidable and they need a broader audience of private testers and test for at least a few days before they release a patch.

You won’t get the green mark when you have entered the password correctly, because in the new system there is no way for the client to know that the password is correct. (Except that he is allowed to connect).

The way the old system worked was that the server had a publicly available checksum for the password, which the client could check to see if it was correct. Right now the client just sends the password to the server. You should get a popup if you entered the password incorrectly and press ok though.